This grant round will offer funding to local authorities to put recommendations from the Independent Review of Children's Social Care into action, by testing specialist multi-disciplinary teams in local areas to support children, young people and families who are vulnerable to violence or criminal exploitation outside of the home.
What is the Agency Collaboration Fund?
The Agency Collaboration Fund aims to find out how agencies can better share data and information to prevent children from becoming involved in violence, to tackle the problem of information being fragmented across multiple organisations. The fund's first grant round, which closed last year, focused on multi-agency deterrence approaches to preventing violent crime, and the fund is now taking applications for its second grant round.
What does this round aim for?
The fund's second grant round A Supportive Home will test specialist multi-agency and multi-disciplinary teams that support children, young people and families who are vulnerable to violence or criminal exploitation outside of the home. The funding will allow local authorities to implement and test recommendations from the Independent Review of Children's Social Care, such as providing services that are tailored to the needs of local children and families, delivered by skilled teams based in community venues including family hubs, schools and health settings.
What children and young people will benefit?
Partnerships are expected to propose projects that will help children and young people who are most in need of support, primarily those aged 10 to 20, who are at risk of being affected by violence, offending or criminal exploitation. This may include children who are care-experienced, known to local authority children's services, involved in anti-social behaviour or offending, excluded from school, have experiences of institutional racism, homeless, or those with special educational needs and disabilities.
Who can apply for the funding?
Up to five local authority partnerships, where the lead partner is the local authority, in England or Wales will be funded under the grant. Partnerships must include a local authority, voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise partners, the police, probation, mental health professionals for children and young adults, and education. The fund also expects applicants to place a strong emphasis on having children and young people involved in service design, delivery and review.
What is expected of successful partnerships?
Each successful partnership will test a multi-agency team approach in two different neighbourhoods within one local authority area, which will provide the ability to test if and how different conditions and systems make a difference to implementing policy and practice for children and young people at risk of harm.
How much and for how long?
Up to £500,000 will be available for each partnership for delivery costs during the initial phase, and between £85,000 and £110,000 will be available per partnership for evaluation.
Projects will receive funding for18 months initially. Those that prove positive will then be funded for a further two or three years and will be subject to an impact evaluation.
What support is available?
Successful partnerships will be supported through both programme phases by a co-design partner from the Youth Endowment Fund. This partner will support partnerships through the preparation phase to develop local systems maps, a partnership delivery model, and a local evaluation plan designed with input from the programme evaluator.
How to apply?
Partnerships can apply using the Youth Endowment Fund's online portal, where they will be asked about their proposal in relation to the fund's criteria.
Applications will close on 16 May, and shortlisted applicants will be informed by 6 June. These applicants will then undergo further interviews, and will be notified of the outcome by 20 June, with final approval of grants awarded expected in July.
Funding roundup
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The Youth Endowment Fund has opened a £10m grant round to test the impact of sports, arts and adventure and wilderness activities on preventing violence. The grant round aims to fund five or six large-scale projects that support children who are already involved in the youth justice system or are considered at high-risk of becoming involved in offending. Projects will be funded for a maximum of 24 months and will need to support a minimum of 350 children over this period. The closing date for applications is 26 May 2023.
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Arts Council England and the Department for Education have announced funding for eight new National Youth Music Organisations, including Awards for Young Musicians, which provides funding and support to young musicians from low-income families, UD which supports young people to explore black music and culture, and Orchestras for All, which launched the world's first disabled-led national youth orchestra, and works with special schools and Music Education Hubs.
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The government has committed to create new community wealth funds from the expanded Dormant Assets Scheme. New community wealth funds will empower local residents in the most deprived neighbourhoods of the country to invest in their local communities and rebuild their social institutions after decades of neglect.
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The Phoenix Way has launched its first emergency round of grant funding for black and racially minoritised organisations in England. Up to £1m will be distributed to organisations who may already have or will suffer disruption to their programmes due to the cost-of-living crisis and inflation.
